Canon Alington was sitting opposite his wife, telling her and Mrs. Owen
about the outside edge. Ambrose and Perpetua had been reading their
books while their elders dined, but at the mention of outside edge they
both looked up, keeping their thin little forefingers in the place.
Ambrose knew about the outside edge too, and from Davos he had
repeatedly written to Perpetua about it.
“Form, form,” said Dick; “anyone can do these things, but the difficulty
is to do them rightly. I myself have much to learn yet.”
The sentiment was humble and true, but the tone was bitter. Canon
Alington had not got over the recollection of a morning at Davos when he
attempted to gain admittance to the English Skating Club. Since that
fatal day there had been severe frosts in Wiltshire, and he had started
the Mannington Skating Club, and had been an assiduous instructor.
Aspirants who wished to skate in a particular roped-off piece of ice had
to pass a test. Ambrose had passed it; but there was no need for himself
to pass it, since he was the judge who decided whether others could do
so. He was rather a strict judge; he insisted on “form.”
Ambrose chipped in--
“Oh, Mrs. Owen,” he said, “papa skated better than anybody at Davos! I
used to watch him rather than skate myself. And wasn’t it a shame----”
Canon Alington interrupted his son. It was better that the disclosure
should come from himself.
“But the Olympians would have none of me,” he said. “Hugh passed, Lady
Rye passed, even Daisy passed. But Ambrose and I were the poor
relations. Ha, ha! I don’t think that it damages us. We skate still.
Davos is rather a cliquey place. Given a return of good old English
winters, I can see Mannington rivalling any Swiss resort. Once back and
forward, and forward inside, eh, Ambrose?”
Mrs. Owen wrung her hands. It was in the manner of a peal of bells that
she did this. She pulled all the fingers in turn.
“I shall never, never forget seeing you skate, Canon Alington,” she
said. “So swift, so commanding! And does Mr. Hugh skate well, too?”
“The makings of a skater,” said the Canon. “He wants perhaps a little
more coaching. Freedom--perhaps a little freedom is lacking.”
“I thought he didn’t skate nearly so well as papa,” said Ambrose
shrilly. “I thought nobody skated so well as papa.”
The door underneath the motto “They sat down to eat and drink” opened,
and Hugh, supposed to be at Davos, came in.
“I apologise,” he said, “but I found they hadn’t received my telegram at
Chalkpits, and there was nothing to eat. I wanted something. How are
you, Agnes? Do give me some cold beef.”
He made his salutations.
“And Mrs. Grainger--Edith?” asked his brother-in-law. (He had always
alluded to her like this since the dreadful days of the Nelson letters.
“Mrs. Grainger” marked the moral difference that there was between them,
“Edith” showed that blood--though there wasn’t any--was thicker than
water.)
Hugh, however, was not trained to these niceties.
“Oh, didn’t you know,” he said, “though, after all, how should you?
She’s at Davos still; getting on awfully well again. I came away for a
jaunt.”
Ambrose never went wrong according to the true standard.
“Oh, Uncle Hugh,” he said, “did you leave Aunt Edith there alone?”
Even the light on his spectacles looked incredulous. Hugh became
flippant.
“Yes, she wants you to go out to keep her company,” he said, “as I ran
away.”
Canon Alington, as he was so often told, had infinite tact. He saw at
once that something dreadful must have happened; everyone, indeed,
except perhaps Perpetua, saw that, and he changed the subject with great
address. That was the advantage of being a man of the world, for there
was no situation in it which he did not feel himself equal to grappling
with, and, if necessary, throwing. The subject had to be changed;
easily, naturally, he changed it.
“You ought to have come back two months ago, Hugh,” he said, “and have
instructed us in the Davos style. I but borrowed a reflected light from
you. We had three weeks’ skating after I returned, and I think we may
say that the standard and form in these parts is improved.”
Mrs. Owen was thrilled; to her acute and active mind the whole situation
was apparent. Hugh had appeared suddenly in Mannington without his wife,
without having let even his sister know he was coming. And he said she
was better, was going on excellently! Something disagreeable, she
rejoiced to think, must have happened. It might only be a temporary
affair, a quarrel of no importance, but in that case Hugh would hardly
have come back suddenly like this without a word to anybody. Agnes, too,
was looking awkward and distressed. And how full of bitterness was
Hugh’s remark to Ambrose that Edith wanted him to go out and keep her
company! Evidently also Canon Alington had come to the same conclusion,
for there was no mistaking the point of the masterly way in which he
changed the conversation. What tact! If everyone behaved so beautifully
there would never be any scandal at all. She felt that the imperfections
of the world had their consoling points.
Dinner was already far advanced, but a plate of something had been
brought for Hugh, and he was eating it with what seemed like appetite.
But Mrs. Owen knew better; it was a pretence of appetite probably. She
had heard of that before. Besides, people who were going to be hung at 8
A.M. often ate excellent breakfasts. Hugh, so to speak, had been hung
forty-eight hours ago, so this was less remarkable a feat.
But for the life of her she could not guess for certain, to her own
satisfaction, what had happened. Months ago, when Canon Alington had
returned, he had announced the incredibly swift recovery of his
sister-in-law (meaning Agnes’s sister-in-law), and had expressed a grave
but cheerful doubt whether she had ever suffered from consumption at
all. “She will be well by May,” he had said. It was May now.
Oh, yes, there was something below these cards, and her poisonous
provincial mind promised itself a treat of some kind. Already she was
saying to herself that she never had liked “those Graingers.”
But there was a limitation clause here. She might still be devoted to
“those Graingers” if this estrangement, whatever it was, was not
disgraceful, especially if she was confided in, if she knew first. She
determined to do her very best to know first. That made a lot of
difference. Perhaps Hugh would confide in her if she showed how
understanding, how sympathetic, how womanly (in the best sense of that
word) she was.
“Dear Mr. Hugh,” she said, “but how we have missed you and your dear
wife! Mannington has not been Mannington without you. She will soon
rejoin you here, I trust?”
“Oh, no,” said Hugh; “she will be at Davos, at least I hope so, all the
summer.”
To the mind of the real scandal-monger no remark is innocent. The
trained vision can find concealment and equivocation everywhere. “At
least I hope so”--what did that mean? It looked as if he did not know
his wife’s movements, did not care, perhaps. Hugh’s innocence appeared
probable to the poisonous mind, and the case began to look grave against
Edith. Mrs. Owen began to recollect also that she had never liked “that
Mrs. Grainger,” who had always held herself so much aloof. No wonder.
But to her broad-minded view the innocent should never suffer with the
guilty. Hugh should not lose his friends, as far as she was concerned.
“You are here for some time, Hugh?” asked his sister.
“I hardly know,” said he; “it depends on other people, and on
circumstances. I shall ask people to come down here, and if they won’t
(“If they won’t!” echoed Mrs. Owen to herself) I shall go away. I can’t
live at Chalkpits all alone. All the same I could be very busy. I should
fish and ride. I have to practise too, as I have a long engagement at
Covent Garden in the summer. Edith begged me not to give it up. Of
course I may have to.”
Mrs. Owen’s suspicions grew darker. She was sure Edith had done
something dreadful. How gallant Hugh was about it! She was sure she
could have behaved just like that, if the opportunity had come in her
way. But it never had. She thought that Hugh was almost certain to
confide in her.
After dinner the usual curriculum was to be expected. Ambrose and
Perpetua, since Mrs. Owen was here, were to sit up to hear her sing one
song, after which they would go to bed, when, since there were four
present, the others would play bridge for the usual stakes, which were
beans. All four players were given a little bag of dried beans, two
hundred in number. At the end of each rubber Canon Alington always said,
“Now for reckoning day,” and you paid your opponent (dividing the points
by ten) the beans he had won, or he paid you the beans he had lost. At
the end of the play you counted up your beans and announced the total.
There were congratulations to the fortunate winners, condolence for the
losers. The beans were then recounted and put away in the bags out of
which they had been taken. Bridge was far too good a game, such was the
pronouncement of Canon Alington, to make it necessary to play for
stakes. To-night he added--
“You might as well skate for stakes, eh, Hugh?”
And Hugh privately thought that his brother-in-law had much better not.
So he only said “Quite so.”
To-night, however, there was a little delay in beginning the curriculum,
for Mrs. Owen at first positively refused to sing at all unless Hugh
stopped his ears, for “she daren’t,” but abated these hard conditions
and consented to give them some bit of Galahad’s diary if Hugh would
sing afterward. So she sang the famous second adventure, while Agnes
closed her eyes because she listened best so, and the Canon beat time
with a paper-knife, and Ambrose and Perpetua turned over, their faces
glued to the music. After which, though marching orders had been issued
for them, they were allowed to stop and hear Uncle Hugh perform. But it
was rather a handicap in that house to sing after Mrs. Owen.
Bridge was unusually exciting that night because of the wonderful
winning power of Mrs. Owen, and had it not been that she revoked once in
no trumps, probably the rest of the world would have been bankrupt, and
what Canon Alington called the “gold reserve”--meaning another bag of
beans--would have had to be put into circulation in order to enable the
game to proceed. She made, too, quite the right remark when, on finding
she was four hundred and twenty-eight to the good, she said, “How
dreadful if we had been playing for money!”
Then, since the inexorable hour of half-past ten had arrived, she
gathered up her music and put on her goloshes, for a little walk was so
pleasant after these exciting games, and started home under Hugh’s
escort, for her house lay between Chalkpits and the Vicarage. This was
exactly what she wanted; she would see if womanliness would not lead to
confidence.
“Such a treat to hear you sing, Mr. Hugh,” she said as they set off,
“and such a pleasure to know that perhaps we may hear you in town again!
You think there is still a chance?”
“Of course, it must depend on my wife,” said he.
Mrs. Owen gave a great sigh, and said nothing for a moment. Then the
stars gave her an inspiration; they had given the same to Galahad when
he said good-night.
“How peaceful starlight is!” she observed. “It makes one see how
infinitesimal our own troubles are when one sees the immensity of
space.”
Hugh’s reply was bitter; oh, she was sure it was bitter.
“Oh, do you think it makes much difference to a toothache if you
remember that Sirius is billions and billions of miles away?” he asked.
Mrs. Owen nearly laid the touch of a fairy hand on his arm. She probably
would quite have done so if it was not holding up her dress.
“Poor Mr. Hugh!” she said softly.
Hugh was rather touched; he did not like his companion, but there was
something genuine in the simplicity of this.
“Thanks,” he said.
They had come to Mrs. Owen’s gate by this time, and she stopped a
moment.
“If I can do anything, you will tell me, will you not?” she said. “And
if people ask me why you have come back alone, what shall I say?”
“Why, that I have come back for a few weeks to see my friends,” he said.
“Yes, I see--yes. Good-night!”
Hugh walked on some hundred yards, pondering a little over this rather
cryptic sentence, but thinking mainly of Davos. Then a sudden thought
struck him; but the moment it really took shape he laughed at it. There
were limits to the absurdity even of people who had thought Edith’s
paper on the newly discovered Nelson letters unfit for the digestion of
the Literific.
It was daffodil-weather next day, and he spent a delightful morning,
noting down what he knew Edith would care to hear about, seeing with her
eyes as far as he could and hearing with her delicate sense. Till
mid-day or thereabout he prowled round the gardens, and up on to the
down where she had revealed Andrew Robb, and found everywhere the
intimate thrill of home. It was all part of him and her, as he had once
said to her, and while it was newly fresh he went indoors again to write
her word of it--
Yes, my darling, it is daffodil-weather on my first morning here,
and I, too, prayed for Peggy--oh! by the way, I have just heard
from her, and she and Daisy are coming down this afternoon, so I
shan’t be alone for a single day--when I went into the copse above
the Chalkpit. There they were, millions and millions, like splashes
of sun. And the beeches had that sort of green powder on their
stems which only appears in spring (do you know it?), and birds,
birds; you never saw such a business. All the gentlemen were
running after the ladies, and the ladies were pretending to run
away, but they never ran far. Above, the down was still gray, but I
searched among the old grass, the way you showed me, and the tiny
fresh shoots and spears were just beginning to come up. Oh! I dined
at Dick’s last night, because they hadn’t got my telegram (I don’t
think I sent it, by the way), and there wasn’t anything to eat
(here, you understand). Mrs. Owen was there. She sang Galahad’s
“Good Night.” (Oh! I forgot--on the down I threw my hat in the air
as I did when you told me you were A. R., just at the same place.
That’s all; I thought you would like to know.) Yes, she sang
Galahad’s “Good Night.” Galahad’s “Good Night.” Lor’! Then she
revoked at Bridge, which we played at for beans. Then I walked home
with her, and we talked about the stars, and how calm they were.
What a fiend! They like her so much, too.
What of the garden? Well, it’s you, just as the down and the
daffodils are. But I don’t like the steep bank up to the broad walk
from the tennis court. (Peggy brings George Alexander Hugh with
her, and says he’s as long as his name now.) All over the elms the
leaves are bursting, and the hawthorn hedge is covered with little
bunches of green, just like the way fire bursts out from squibs.
And all morning one tune rang in my head, “_Meine Seele_.”
Then I went down to the water-meadow. (By the way, I sang that last
night, and told them it was Tschaikowsky, and Mrs. Owen said she
knew it so well. What a liar!) And I stepped into an enormous
bog-hole right up to my knee. Heaps of forget-me-nots, and the
water as blue. I shall try to get a trout this evening; no use
before about sunset. What a silly letter; full of little things.
Oh! Edith, your room. I could have howled. I wish you weren’t so
blooming essential to every place we have been in together. Yet it
wouldn’t be you if you weren’t, and it wouldn’t be the place,
either. But your room needed you most of all. I sat in your chair
for ages, and in the blotting-pad between the leaves there was
tucked away a half-sheet of paper with “Household Books” written
very neatly at the top. Such method, and no result! Not another
word. I wonder if you paid them, even.
I had a splendid journey--a few moments of shrill expostulation at
Basle, because they wanted me to throw away some wax matches, but
my powerful mixture of French, English, German and a little
operatic Italian like “_Lasciate mi_” reduced them. And all the
time that the miles were lengthening out between us, the thread
never broke, and it reaches all the way to me here, the golden
thread. By now, too, you will have written me a long letter all
about yourself, and it’s coming as quick as it can, the sluggard!
Edith, it’s too killing for words. I am quite sure that Mrs. Owen
thinks that you and I have quarrelled. My sudden presence here
alone is felt to want explanation. I think I must be right about
it. I _do_ hope so. If I’m right Mrs. Owen will certainly pump me.
I shall lead her on, o’er moor and fen and crag, until she topples
into the torrent. Oh! that’s profane. Sorry! When she has
definitely committed herself, and I think she will, I shall tell
her what I think in polite language. It occurred to me last night,
when I tumbled in upon them all without warning, that they thought
something was odd. Then when I said “Good-night” to her at her
gate, she said she would be so willing to help. This morning I have
been thinking it over, and I believe she must have meant
something. Dick was slightly more parochial, too, when I went away.
Oh! how I long for you. That’s all.
RIGHT
Hugh.
P. S.--Mrs. Owen! Mrs. Owen!!!
Hugh addressed his letter and rang the bell, saying, it must go at once,
as is the habit of people who wish their letters to arrive at their
destinations irrespective of the time at which posts start. Had he known
what was going on within a few hundred yards of him he would probably
have delayed it.
Mrs. Owen had awoke that morning with a strong consciousness of some
duty to be done. For the moment she could not determine in what
direction that duty lay. As far as she knew, there was no kindness left
unperformed, no remission of her sunbeam efforts. (In the earlier days
of their married life Mr. Owen had habitually called her “Sunbeam.” He
now called her S. B.) Then she remembered. She got up at once.
It was wise in such cases to take the worst possible view, especially if
you are going to be helpful. That saved shocks afterward, though
sometimes (she did not think this) it entailed disappointments. “Hope
for the best, but prepare for the worst and be helpful” was a favourite
motto of hers, which also was a condensation of one of Canon Alington’s
sermons. The phrase at once suggested to her the next step. She would
“drop in” at St. Olaf’s with the seeds which she had promised--had she
not?--to give him. And then she would be really diplomatic and also true
to herself. She would sound him; she would find out whether some such
dreadful idea had occurred to him as had occurred to her. If so, they
would hold sweet converse together. If not, she would erase all these
terrible surmises from her mind. If he had not thought of that (she did
not quite know what “that” was, but it was scandalous), she would cease
to think of “that” at all, and demand even when alone, no explanation of
Hugh’s mysterious appearance. The phrase “to thine own self be true”
gave her enterprise the light of mission-work. But Shakespeare, perhaps,
did not reflect, and certainly she did not, that if you are true to
people like Mrs. Owen, the result to others whom you cannot be false to,
is not a very happy or distinguished performance.
The technique of her plan was brilliantly successful. She chose her hour
well, the hour when (probably) Canon Alington would have finished his
letters, and be doing something strenuous in the garden, and when Agnes
would be still employed indoors, the “Martha-hour,” as her husband
called it, though he did not mean that he was doing the better part.
There he was, sure enough, hatless and coatless, for he was not the sort
of man who thought it necessary to appear always in clerical garb,
chopping down a tree in the paddock. Her foot was noiseless on the
grass, and he did not see her till she had approached quite near. But
she saw him; there was not the excellent physical vigour that usually
hung about him. He was listless, sad. And the moment he saw her he put
down his axe, instead of giving a few more violent strokes, which would
have been characteristic of him.
“I have brought you the seeds I spoke of,” she said. “They ought to be
sown now, and the plants will be quite hardy by the autumn.”
He took the packet.
“Thanks,” he said absently--“thanks.”
A dreadful silence. Mrs. Owen told herself that her errand had not been
in vain. As a matter of fact, she did not know what the seeds were. Nor
did he. She was determined, however, that he should begin. That was
only right. He began.
“How did you think Hugh Grainger was looking?” he asked. “We were both
most surprised at his suddenly appearing like that. Did he look to you
well--happy?”
Mrs. Owen was nothing if not simple.
“No,” she said.
Canon Alington put on his coat.
“You can give me ten minutes?” he asked. “We can never forget, Agnes and
I, the service you did us about those dreadful Nelson letters. And if
people do one a service one turns to them again. So I consult you; I
turn to you. Why has Hugh come back like this? Why has he left his wife
in Davos? Mrs. Owen, is she at Davos?”
* * * * *
It is one of the sad things of life, as the poet Gray has remarked, that
so many flowers blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert
air. But it is much sadder to think how many flowers of humour do the
same, owing to the lack of that subtle quality in the audience. Mrs.
Owen saw nothing in the least humorous in the fact that she and Canon
Alington (and Agnes) had, on the bare fact of Hugh’s return, built a
whole tragedy. She had no conception how ludicrous she and her pompous
companion were being, she only thought they were striving to be helpful.
It never entered her head even that she was following this up with a
sort of ghoulish gusto for scandal, nor that, if their surmises proved
to be completely unwarranted, she would heave a sigh of relief, and in
reality be much disappointed. Instead of realising this, she only
clasped her hands together and turned her eyes upward.
“I will sacrifice all day if I can help in this dreadful business,” she
said, tacitly answering Canon Alington’s question, and feeling already
quite sure that Mrs. Grainger was no longer at Davos. She remembered,
too, the position of Davos on the map of Europe; it was not so very far
from the Italian lakes, where all sorts of dreadful things constantly
occurred.
For one fleeting moment some glimmering of common sense flashed across
Canon Alington.
“Do you think we are drawing conclusions from insufficient data?” he
asked.
Such a thought had never entered Mrs. Owen’s head. She said so.
“Then there is but one thing to be done,” said Canon Alington, “and that
is to go straight to poor Hugh and put ourselves at his disposal, to
help in any way we can. Perhaps if we convince him that that is our only
object he will tell us what this all means. It may be only a passing
misunderstanding, in which case he ought to go back to his wife at once.
It may be worse than that. But, whoever is the culprit, we are agreed on
our sole purpose, to help.”
Their joint action before in the case of the Nelson letters had been
crowned with such marvellous success that it was soon agreed that they
should act in concert again. Canon Alington, it is true, had not quite
forgotten yet a few stinging moments, when Hugh sat on the stile on the
way back to church, but he had withdrawn his words and apologised that
very evening, in a truly Christian spirit. His brother-in-law,
therefore, considered now that those words had not been said. It was
agreed, too, that Agnes, at present, at any rate, need not be mixed up
in this painful business, and without further delay the two set off for
Chalkpits. They arrived soon after Hugh had posted his letter to Edith;
from his window he saw their approach, he saw the solemn purpose on
their faces. This time their misguided interference (if their errand
should prove to be this) excited in him only wild, hilarious merriment,
and for a moment he hid his face in a sofa cushion and shook. Then he
composed himself. How right Edith had been before; how infinitely better
it was to be amused! He fully intended to extract the utmost possible
amusement out of it. And he _would_ tell Peggy this time.
They were shown in, and he received them very gravely. His hair was a
little disordered from his explosion in the sofa-cushion, and Mrs. Owen
thought he looked very wild.
“It is kind of you to come,” he said.
And they all sat down together as if by machinery.
“Very kind of you to come,” repeated Hugh.
The devil could not have suggested to him more fiendishly ingenious
words. It was quite clear to both his visitors that he knew why they had
come. It was true--he did.
Mrs. Owen writhed and undulated toward him. It had been settled that she
should speak first; the womanly touch was the thing to begin with,
afterward the Church would advise and console.
“Dear Mr. Hugh,” she said, “we only want to help. That is all our
object. If there is anything we can do?”
Hugh bit his tongue to stop the sudden convulsion that nearly broke from
him. This was done so successfully that it sounded like a sob.
“Tell us all about it, my dear fellow,” said Canon Alington. “Take your
time. Or, would you rather speak to me alone, or to Mrs. Owen alone?”
“No; both of you,” said Hugh.
“We know nothing yet,” said Dick, “except that there is something
wrong. So just relieve our minds of the worst anxiety first. Is she
still at Davos?”
Hugh sat quite still a moment, and he had no longer the slightest desire
to laugh. He had imagined only that these two idiots had thought that he
and Edith had had some quarrel. But slowly the meaning of that question
dawned on him. He turned very red, then very white.
“Just explain your question a little more,” he said quickly. “Where else
should she be? Why should she be anywhere else?”
Then, luckily for everybody, his sense of humour came to his aid. It was
the most glorious thing that ever happened. And his voice trembled over
the next question.
“Answer me quickly,” he said, “or I shall burst. Did your question imply
that you thought she had run away, left me?”
Canon Alington got up.
“We had better be going,” he said to Mrs. Owen; “we only came to try to
help.”
“Oh, wait a minute,” said Hugh. “There is plenty of time. That occurred
to you then, I take it; that was your worst anxiety. I will remove that
at once. That being disposed of, I suppose you thought we had
quarrelled. Edith and I! Quarrelled! Oh, Dick, never try to make another
joke as long as you live! You will never, never beat that. Your
reputation as a humourist is secure. Don’t spoil it. Oh, Christmas!”
Then he recollected some sort of manners, and turned to Mrs. Owen.
“I am quite sure that you meant most kindly,” he said, sacrificing all
vestige of truth--“but,” and he had to stop in order to control his
voice, “but don’t you think it was rather a hasty conclusion? Thanks
awfully, all the same. Thanks.”
And then he could no longer check himself. There came a breaking point.
He turned his face to the wall and tried to bury it in his hands. But
shrieks of laughter burst forth through the chinks in his fingers. He
was very sorry about it; manners had again gone to the winds, but he was
perfectly powerless. If people made such wonderful jokes what were you
to do?
Then, after a moment, he controlled himself, and turned to the room
again. But it was empty. So he sat down and laughed properly. The window
was wide open, and as the steps of his visitors crunched over the gravel
maniac yells and cries besieged their ears.
They were both rather red in the face, and they walked a little way
without speech. Then Canon Alington spoke _ex cathedrâ_.
“I am deeply thankful,” he said, “that we have cleared it up”; and, with
his usual tact, spoke at once of the decorations in the church for the
festival of Easter. But still Hugh’s laughter came to them, and once
Mrs. Owen, whose hearing was remarkably acute, thought she heard the
shrill falsetto words, “Is she at Davos? Oh-h-h!”
And she had taken so much trouble to get intimate at Chalkpits. She felt
it was all thrown away now. The conclusion was perfectly just, logical,
irrefutable, all that conclusions ought to be. She determined that they
should be “those Graingers.” What a pity, though! She felt sure that
there was so much in common between them and her. Perhaps it was
premature to think of them as “those Graingers” just yet. What a
blessing, anyhow, that it had been Canon Alington who had been
spokesman. He had really done it very stupidly. Perhaps with care it
might only result in their being “those Alingtons.” And even before she
had reached home her infinitesimal mind was as busy as a bee over
infinitesimal intrigues.
* * * * *
Edith was under contract to telegraph to Hugh at least once a day, and
to write as often as she felt inclined, and for the next week, with
Peggy and Daisy in the house, the days, lacking the presence that made
days perfect, came as near to perfection as might be. Telegrams came
with more than daily frequency, and thoroughly satisfactory contents,
and letters were daily also; not long very often, but always happy,
always giving good accounts, and always bursting with satisfaction at
the success of the writer’s diplomacy with regard to her birthday
present to him.
The days were full of mirth also, for Peggy had taken the helpfulness of
Mannington in the humorous spirit, and bade Hugh look at postmarks, to
make certain that Edith was still at Davos. She had insisted also on the
absurdity of there being any breach between St. Olaf’s and Chalkpits,
and, with the sweeping good nature and inability to harbour resentment
or malice which was so characteristic of her, had insisted on Hugh’s at
once asking both Mr. and Mrs. Owen and the vicar and his wife to dinner,
simultaneously, and she would hold herself responsible for the success
of it.
“You’ve only got to be natural with people,” she said, “and they’ll be
natural too.”
“Oh, but it’s natural to Mrs. Owen to be affected, and to Dick to be a
prig,” said Hugh.
“Oh, no, it isn’t. That’s only veneer. We shall play
Beggar-my-neighbour. You will see.”
They came, and Peggy conquered. And Mrs. Owen, as she walked home in
her goloshes, thought that perhaps it would be neither “those Graingers”
nor “those Alingtons,” but “those dear Graingers and Alingtons.”
Fishing had begun, and Peggy at once saw that nothing else mattered. The
fact that it was dry-fly work, and she at present hardly knew one end of
a rod from the other, did not interfere at all with her determination to
fish, and, as a matter of fact, she hooked a trout (who must have been
mad) on the third day, which agitated her so much that she fell into the
river, and had to go home. Hugh, however, went on, and Daisy stopped
down with him. Peggy toiled up to the house, her wet skirt clinging to
her with almost touching fidelity, and impeding her movements as only a
wet skirt can. Going through the hall, and dropping showers of blessings
as she passed, she saw that the mid-day post had just come in. There was
a pile for her, and nothing for Hugh except a telegram. So there was no
letter from Edith to him to-day, unless, indeed, it had come by the
morning post. That was unusual, however, it always arrived by this
second delivery. Yet there was a telegram.
Then, quite suddenly and causelessly, Peggy felt anxious, and it became
necessary to send this telegram down to him by the river, so that if
there was bad news he should get it at once. She felt certain that it
did contain bad news, and longed for a moment to open it herself. But
she could not do that, and so merely scribbled on the outside, “Send it
back to me to read.” Then she went upstairs to change.
A quarter of an hour afterward she was laughing at her fears, for he had
it back, opened, to be given to her, and it contained the words merely--
“No time to write yesterday. Lovely weather, very busy, so well.”
Peggy remained in her room till lunch-time, answering her post, and by
degrees she grew troubled again. What was Edith so busy with? There was
nothing that could make her busy except her play. Was Andrew Robb back
again?
Hugh, as often happened when he was fishing, did not appear at the
luncheon hour, and Peggy, according to custom, began alone. Still some
vague misgiving obsessed her; she had, in any case, to laugh at her
fears, which showed that her fears, though she did not know what they
were, were there. Through the dining-room window, looking out on to the
gravel in front of the house, she saw a telegraph boy arrive on a
bicycle, and she felt sure this was a second telegram for Hugh, which
again, for the sake of his peace of mind, she would have to send down to
him at once. Again she was completely wrong; the telegram was for her,
and was of no importance whatever. It was easier to laugh at her fears
after this, but still she had to laugh at them. If she did not, they
reappeared.
She finished lunch alone, but about now the sun, after a cloudy morning,
dispersed the encumbrances and shone vigorously. That would make fishing
impossible for the afternoon--Hugh would soon be up from the river with
Daisy, ravenous for food.
Then, just as she strolled out to have her coffee outside in the sun,
something further crunched the gravel. Again it was the bicycle of a
telegraph-boy, and she took the telegram herself from his hand, at the
front door, feeling certain now, after her experiences of false alarm in
the morning, that it was for her. But again was wrong; it was for Hugh.
So she put it on the hall-table inside, and merely waited for him to
come up from the river. But it was a foreign telegram.
Peggy sat down and drank her coffee, wondering what had so upset her.
True she had fallen into the river, and lost a trout in consequence, and
got very wet, but some sense of calamity was over her. Then suddenly she
was immensely reassured, for the figures of Hugh and Daisy appeared
coming up the steep bank from the water-meadow.
“Oh, mummy, three fish,” shrieked Daisy, “and one is bigger than you
ever saw. I did the landing-net.”
But Hugh, too, was grave.
“Is there a letter from Edith?” he asked.
“No. Another telegram has just come for you. I didn’t send it down,
because I expected you to come immediately.”
Hugh paused beside her.
“Three fish,” he said; “isn’t that big one a beauty? Peggy, why is she
busy?”
He met her eyes; he saw the causeless trouble in her face.
“It’s on the hall table,” she said.
Hugh went inside, leaving the landing-net with the three fish in it on
the steps. In a moment he reappeared again, with the telegram in his
hand.
“Open it,” he said. “Tell me.”
What was this wave of inexplicable communication that had reached them
both? Whatever it was, it was borne here on the wings of love, the love
that turned to them. So there was nothing to be frightened at.
She took it from him, opened it, read it. Then she leaned a little
forward toward him, and put her hand on his arm.
“Yes, dear,” she said, “we must go back to Davos--now, I mean. Oh,
Hughie, face it. It is very bad; no, not the worst. But she is very
ill!”
She handed him the telegram.
“Go and eat something, Hugh,” she said. “I will make all your
arrangements. But shall I come with you? Say what you think is best; I
will be ready as soon as you. But be sensible, dear. Go and eat while I
look out trains. Only, would you rather I came with you or not?”
He took the telegram, read it, saw what it was.
“No,” said he. “But will you stop down here, so that you will be on the
spot to make all arrangements?”
“Yes, yes,” said she.
“Thanks, Peggy. We shall come back here as soon as she can be moved. We
settled that.”